Recently, I’ve curated a number of image series by photographers from ‘Flickr’ on my blog ‘Aesthetic Investigations’. Subsequently, I thought it would be interesting to document these works in a book. Therefore, i’ve arranged a collection of ’39’ abstract and minimal photographic series by these ’32’ artists. A selection of pages from the book can be viewed below, a full book preview can be seen: HERE

My pre-occupation as an artist is with creating highly distilled, contemplative nuances of feeling in print. I aim to compose images – drawn from nature and memory – of stark yet tactile forms, held momentarily out of balance; forms disappearing into immaterial shadows and configurations of form in spatial settings, undergoing transformation. I’m fascinated by forms appearing like projections onto surfaces, fragile and immaterial articulations, punctuated by the interplay of light and shade. Re-discovering delicate forms in space at distances defined by rhythm and structure, are of interest to me.

My objective is to create a state of suspension of individual elements, caught in a complex of layers with deceptive simplicity. The creation of these images is intuitive in nature. The creative process is ongoing, with every intuition, reflection and configuration, pre-figuring another possibility. The printing process is an integral part of my working process. The separation and building up of layers, multiple overprinting, the use of inks of differing viscosities – these modifications inform the work as it evolves. The tactile qualities of print-making, the depth and richness of surface, are crucial. – [Artists Statement]

Christopher Wool is best known for his paintings of large, black, stenciled letters on white canvases. However, Wool possesses a wide range of style – using a combined array of painterly techniques, including spray paint, silkscreen, and hand painting. Christopher provides tension between painting and erasing, gesture and removal, depth and flatness. [Extract : Gagosian Gallery]

“All Lanyon’s forms derive, in a very strict sense, from sensory experience of his subject: and I do not limit this to visual experience, because he admits feeling, knowledge and experienced sensation from more than one of his senses. What he sees as he walks or rides on his motorbike through the landscape may constitute the larger part of what goes into a picture. But what he experiences physically – the up-and-downness of the path: the sliding pastness of house, rock or hill as he rides along: the going-throughness of a gap between the rocks – equally has a place in the amalgam of his painting, contributing to the totality of his awareness of the landscape … With Lanyon, every canvas recreates a particular hill (or harbour, or cliff) by merging the evidence gained through numerous channels from more than one viewpoint” Patrick Heron

Lanyon took up gliding in 1959 and this had a profound effect on his work as he translated the experiences that he encountered in the air into his paintings, collages and constructions.

‘This is why I do gliding myself, to get actually into the air itself and get a further sense of depth and space into yourself, as it were, into your own body, and then carry it through a painting. I think this is a further extension of what Turner was doing’. Peter Lanyon

One of the preeminent artists of his generation, Mark Rothko is closely identified with the New York School, a circle of painters that emerged during the 1940s as a new collective voice in American art. During a career that spanned five decades, he created a new and impassioned form of abstract painting. Rothko’s work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. He explained:

“It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.”